ARTS Saves Les Misérables

This past weekend The Hilliard Arts Council successfully produced their annual summer community musical, this year the musical was Les Miserables. It was the first licensed community production of the musical to take the stage in Central Ohio since the licensing became available and since the film took the screen. The performances took place at Hilliard Darby High School on July 12, 13, and 14.

Several weeks earlier, the Arts Council discovered that the venue, where they had decided to host this year’s summer musical, had some serious issues with their house PA. This was problematic because the Arts Council relies on venue house PA’s when they produce performances. ARTS Owner, Robert Vance, looked into the issues that were taking place and diagnosed that three out of four house PA horns were completely blown and the fourth was significantly damaged. The school district took steps to address the issue and replaced components in all four horns.

Once the repair was complete, the Arts Council was hopeful that all of their PA issues were resolved. Unfortunately, as soon as the system was powered back up, the same issues arose. Turns out, all the horns were blown again, now only days away from the first dress rehearsal.

Once again, Robert looked into the problem. But this time knowing that it wasn’t a high school student accidentally playing music too loud that blew the horns, Robert wondered why the horns blew again. In looking into the configuration of the signal processor in the system, Robert realized that the crossover was set incorrectly. Full range was being sent to the horns. This time, when the district had their chosen contractor come out again to replace components in the horns, based on Robert’s diagnosis, the district knew to ask about the crossover settings and make sure that it was configured correctly before the vendor left the job site.

At this point, however, it was too late to use the house PA. Unfortunately, the system was not repaired in time for the musical. This is where ARTS came to the rescue. We provided a complete house PA for the production – front of house mix, monitor and orchestra sub mixes, compressor/limiters for wireless vocal microphones, power amplifiers and a main house PA with front-fill speakers, vocal and instrumental microphones, etc. The whole shebang.